David Vinckboons was a master of dense woodland views during the early years of the seventeenth century. In his drawings, he frequently used colored washes to enhance the effect of light filtering through a leafy canopy.

Most of the approximately eighty-four known drawings by David Vinckboons were produced before 1610.1 The Landscape with the Baptism of the Eunuch in Oberlin is among Vinckboons's earliest drawings, and probably predates the earliest dated sheet by the artist, the Lovers in the Forest of 1600.2 The spontaneous quality of the pen lines, coupled with the delicate application of colored washes, produces an unaffected and very personal interpretation of nature that is typical of early drawings by the artist. Vinckboons frequently used white bodycolor and brown, grey, or blue washes to recreate the flickering effects of light and shadow created by the sun filtering sporadically through a forest canopy.

Like many of Vinckboons's early works, the Oberlin drawing is heavily influenced by the landscapes of Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1607). Although Coninxloo was not the first artist to compose views of dense forest interiors (his predecessors included Pieter Bruegel and Jan Brueghel the Elder), his shadowy copses, inhabited by isolated figures dwarfed by the massive trees, were the immediate inspiration for Vinckboons's woodland views.3In this and other early landscapes by Vinckboons--both drawn and painted--the diminutive figures are almost subsumed by the foliage; after about 1605, figures assume a greater importance in relation to the setting.

The composition depicts the encounter between the Apostle Philip, en route to Gaza, and a high-ranking eunuch in the service of the Ethiopian queen Candace, traveling with his entourage. Philip explained a difficult passage in the Book of Isaiah to the eunuch in Christological terms, demonstrating that Jesus was the son of God prophesied in the scripture. The eunuch was so thoroughly convinced that he converted to Christianity and was baptised by Philip in a nearby stream (Acts 8:26-38).

In composing his scene, Vinckboons may have been familiar with a print of the subject engraved by Philips Galle after Maarten van Heemskerck, published in 1575.4 Particularly similar in the two works (albeit reversed in Galle's print) is the steeply foreshortened view of the eunuch's canopied chariot, drawn by two restive horses, parked in the distance. Vinckboons also made a painting of the Baptism of the Eunuch, formerly in the collection Semenov-Tianshansky, St. Petersburg, which has been dated by Goossens to about 1603.5There, the wooded setting has been expanded to a horizontal format and the Ethiopian's entourage greatly increased, but the figures of Philip and the eunuch, as well as the horse-drawn chariot, are quite similar to those in the Oberlin drawing, in reverse.6

M. E. Wieseman

BiographyDavid Vinckboons was born in the Flemish city of Mechelen on 13 August 1576. His father Philip (1545-1601) was also a painter, and David received his first training from him. Following the fall of Antwerp to Spanish forces in 1586, and the ensuing persecution of Protestants throughout the Southern Netherlands, the Vinckboons family emigrated to the Northern Netherlands, and settled in Amsterdam in 1591. David Vinckboons married Agnieta van Loon in 1602; the couple had ten children, several of whom became mapmakers, painters, or architects. The exact place and date of Vinckboons's death are not known, but his wife is referred to as a widow in a document of 12 January 1633.

Vinckboons painted primarily landscapes and genre scenes, the latter often in outdoor settings. These densely forested views reflect his contact with the Flemish-born landscape painter Gillis van Coninxloo (1544-1607). Vinckboons was also active as a draftsman and designer of prints. Among his pupils and followers were Gillis d'Hondecoeter (ca. 1575/80-1638) and (probably) Esaias van de Velde.

Technical DataThe primary support has been mounted on a thin sheet of laid paper, and is bordered on all sides by ruled lines drawn in brown ink. The backing sheet has the watermark of a Posthorn over the letter "B," a variant of Churchill 330 (eighteenth century).7 The pen lines in brown ink are iron gall or possibly bister; the extensive brushwork is executed primarily in blue (probably indigo) with admixtures of white lead and carbon black to achieve a range of tonal values. There is foxing present on the verso of the primary support and on the backing sheet, but the drawing is otherwise in excellent condition.